Long Lucid Dreams And The Brain?

Now I know there are several ways to make your lucid dreams a tad bit longer, and there probably has been a great deal of discussion on this topic, but I have been wondering about several things when it comes to making lucid dreaming longer, and how it can effect the brain/body.

For example what exactly is the limit for the length of a lucid dream? I have heard that one can stay for several weeks in a lucid dream but exactly how does that work? If you are asleep for a certain amount of hours how does it seem like days? What is the longest you have been in an LD? Does anyone know the limit?

Second of all does prolonging lucid dreams hurt your REM cycle? In other words can staying in a lucid dream “too long” hurt your sleep in any way?

Oh and If anyone knows exactly how to make your LDs last Ridiculously Long, please tell how!

Being In a Lucid Dream for a year now that would be something. Responses are well appreciated. I really hope I posted this topic in the right place.

I once had a lucid dream that lasted 2 days, but I only slept for 8 hours. Time in a lucid dream lasts longer then “time”. I guess, but this is only a theory.

If I were in a lucid dream for a year id be freaked out that I wouldnt wake up and see my friends and family. :sad: But I have heard of this one guy on the forum and he had a week long lucid dream. That would be sweet :eek: .

Do you mean that the dream was a week or he slept for a week?

it wud be great to sleep a year in LD but 8 in RL. but sad part is i havent evn had 1 LD yet!!!

No I mean that your “lucid dream” lasts a long time but you sleep time is the same. Apparently time in dreams and real time do not correlate. Its awesome! But I still want to know how one achieves these long LDs. If any one has tips or experiences please share

Who’s Brian? :gni:

Yep, I’ve seen talk of this on the forum before…and I really don’t know what to tell you. See, that whole idea didn’t really add up to me: Someone sleeps for 8 hours, and they say they were dreaming for what felt like a week. Problem is, REM comes along in bouts. So maybe some people can prolong time, but really, to what extent? And would this really prolong the REM cycle, or does that have a life of its own? I don’t know. I can’t really buy into the “year long LD” thing when a person is only in REM for…at the most, maybe over an hour at a time, right?

Well, if you want to try it, i’d say you need:

  1. to have a lot of time to sleep. Maybe a weekend or time off
  2. Dark, quiet, comfortable place to sleep
  3. No distrations/annoyances in RL
  4. to study prolonging methods. Study well
  5. Give it hell and keep at it

lol yeah thanks for pointing that out Sonia lol

I thought perhaps it is accelerated thought meshed up into some singular conciseness. i also have another theory but it doesn’t apply to atheists because they don’t believe in it but I have heard that for a spirit time is not applicable, there is no future or past just now. Perhaps your souls perception of time is distorted since your body is resting your connection to your physical body is wavering.

It’s interesting stuff since we don’t really understand sleep, but you are able to change the type of brain waves while staying conscious via meditation (like to theta or beta) , maybe you can do that with REM somehow? At any rate as long as it feels like a super long LD i want to be able to do it.

The longest LD I ever had lasted 2 days in my dream world, 8hrs in RL.

I’ve never had any that lasted a week, though. :eh:

There’s a theory that in the “astral” plane, time is distorted from that in the physical…but still existent. The higher up the dimensional scale, however, the more abstract time and space become until a point is reached where there is no time: The eternal Now, containg both the alpha and the omega. Is this where you are pointing?

And by the way, I noticed your custom title: I am. :cool: Funny thing is, before I saw it, I thought of making it my own custom title…or maybe I even had it for a while, I don’t remember. Or, additionally, the statement “I am that I am,” the suggestion that consciousness in its purest form is timeless and thus eternal. Ahhhh, now. Are you familiar with Eckhart Tolle?

When I had two lucid dreams that lasted more than a day in dream time, 8 hours of sleep, my mind was exhausted and I felt drained at work the next day. I don’t have any brain scaners or anything but I believed I could have tampered with the REM cycle and caused my mind to work while the body is asleep which could have induced the negative effects.

PS a lucid dream for a year I would forget about this reality completely if that would happen and be shocked when I woke up.

Hey Reaper.

To answer your first question, the length of a lucid dream is limited to 1) [REM] sleep cycle, and 2) stretch of the imagination. For example, you may be in a REM period for one hour, and if lucid, could distort “time” in the dream to span over the course of several days. (Although years and beyond may seem unfathomable, I believe they are attainable to the ambitious lucid dreamer.)

And, as for your next two questions: (I’ll answer these as one…) To put it quite simply, time is condensed in dreams. More or less. (There are other factors, such as the chaotic inconsistency of the background. I.e.: Day can become night in an instant, without much notice from us.) Dreams tend not to waste time on the “filler” parts. (Stuff we do in WL, like walking [the entire way] to the store.) The dream seems to want to get straight to the matter at hand. This is how you find yourself at school without knowledge of how you got there. Or how nightfall arrived seconds after sunrise. And because we’re, normally, never trying to figure this out as we’re dreaming, it becomes accepted, and maybe even reasoned with false memories, so we continue about, believing an entire day has passed us by when we may have only been dreaming for ten minutes.

Last question… I’ve only stayed in a lucid dream for about a day, at most.

He slept for only 4 hours.

There may be ways to stretch out time, but I don’t know exactly how it is done. I have had LDs that felt very long, but in the retelling of the tale, I find they have very little substance!

Also dreams and REM are co related, but we still dream outside of the REM cycle. (IMO research is constructed on REM type dreams because researchers have physical ques that show when someone is dreaming. But research also shows we do dream outside of REM… so we are not just limited to those little windows of opportunity when our eyes are buzzing madly behind our eyelids like wasps stealing honey!)

When we consider time I think there are several factors we need to consider. We can measure time with a clock, but anyone who has tried that in a dream know its not too successful (or consistent). I think we also unconsciously judge time based on many acute external ques. For example, the light of the day, how dark the room gets, the angle of light, different sounds that are associated with the time of day etc. And we have our internal clocks monitoring time too.

So, I think time is relatively a subjective construct influenced by many factors when it comes to ‘perceiving’ time. And just as we can perceive time in waking life without the aid of a clock I think that we might perceive time in dreams in an unconscious way.

Actually I believe your conciseness is much more connected to your soul than your body in dreams. And since your souls perception of time is different from the analytical mind times perception is affected.

I have no idea who Eckhart Tolle is. I had just been thinking about what to put for title. there are so many things i could put about myself or “what I am” But in the end you just are. Therefore “I am” It encompasses everything in two simple words. You just are, I just am.

I always wonder if in these extended LD’s it only feels like a long time has passed or are you actually able to do a great number of things. I mean have a 1 hour LD (IWL) and do more things than you could possibly do in an hour…

Anyway, I’ve seen that WritersCube has some very long LD’s. I should get some patience and read through them… :shy:

Today when I woke up, I was very very tired, but I could not fall asleep again, so I was awake for like 25 minutes, because of my grandpa working in his worskhop and I was angry because I wanted to sleep but I couldn’t! Suddenly as I was lying in bed, I realized that I can no longer hear the annoying smashing hammer and that I’m lucid, and then I had one of the best and long lasting LDs ever(around half an hour of high lucidity) :cool: It was about being in year 2258 but I’m too lazy to type the details in here :tongue:

interesting.

I’ll put a different theory… which seems to be my point of view. Maybe, the dream just lasts fast-forward in our imagination, but the brain just makes up our mind to see the dream like it had been lasting normally? Sounds crazy… but remember, that S. Hawking said, that we’re some kind of hologramme and the others confirmed that it might be true. But might be.